Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore: The silver lining

"Cricket is the main sport in India. I love it too. But I hope this silver will give a boost to Olympic sport in the country," the shooter said.

Waiting for the bus to the Markopoulos shooting range this afternoon, a question from a Chinese journalist rattled me. "From India? How many medals have you won?"

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"We are working hard at it," one replied.

There was nothing else to say. You were aware that Rathore had qualified for the final, but the setbacks and heartbreaks over the past four days had brought in this nagging fear — one of another debacle.

Two hours later, it was easy to smile and laugh and feel tempted to shout out at the world, "I'm an Indian." 'Chilly' Rathore had changed the meaning of being an Indian in this Olympic city of Athens in 40 minutes.

When Rathore walked out to face the cameras, soon after his triumph, there was bedlam of a happy kind — with every Indian wanting a piece of him. He was soon swamped by Indian mediapersons, officials and fellow shooters. Coach Sunny Thomas and shooters Manavjit Singh and Suma Shirur were the first to hug him.

Indian Olympic Association president Suresh Kalmadi and secretary Randhir Singh rushed in hug him.

Abhinav Bindra sat in the gallery giving bytes to TV personnel. "He is my hero. I always knew he would win a medal. He is just too tough mentally," he said.

And yes, there was Mario Perrazzi, the man makes the world-famous "Perrazi" guns. "I made two special guns for him. It worked well, didn't it? This Indian is too cool," he said.

The officials at the arena had a tough time trying to take Rathore away to the dope control room. He came out, draped in the tricolour and showed some emotion for the first time, primarily relief.

At the press conference, Rathore spoke about it all — the grind that these past two years have been, the fears, the sacrifices and of course, that special moment.

Was he happy to be the first Indian to win an Olympic individual silver medal — "I'm not happy to be the first Indian to win a silver medal. I'm just happy that India has won a medal. I just hope this will give belief to the people that we can win more medals...we can excel in sport other than cricket."

Did he prepare in a special manner? "I don't know if it was special but I trained hard in Italy with Australian Russel Mark and Italian Luca Marini. The idea was to stay focused, work on technical abilities and keep the mental faculties intact. That was my method of training."

Did he look at the scoreboard during the final round. "I glanced at it. I could see it in the distance but I could not see the score. I rebuked myself for losing focus and got back to the job at hand," he said.

Is he feeling lighter after the performance? "Yes, I would like to thank everyone who helped me train and stay focused."

And does the media attention bother him? "Sometimes you want to stay away from it all. It taxes you a lot trying to answer questions before a competition. It pinches at times. So it is better to stay away from the glare."

He will find it difficult to do that now.